1. 10 Ways To Screw Up a Scholarship Application

4. * When given a choice, avoid controversial issues (abortion, affirmative action, war, etc.) The more contentious the issue you choose to write about, the more likely it is that one or more committee members will completely disagree with you. * Divisive issues divide. * Who’s reading the essay? 1. Thrust Your Religion and Politics Upon Me

6. We all have challenges; not everyone has hardships. Know the difference! * If your parents were killed when you were a baby and you were raised in an orphanage, that’s a unique hardship. If you were raised in Suburbia and had to share your 2,600 square-foot house with three wild and crazy brothers, that’s not. * If you had to get a job at age 8 to help your family pay rent, that’s a hardship. If you had to get a job at 16 to pay for your first car, that’s not. * If you were hit by a BMW and finished your senior year telecommuting from the intensive care unit, that’s a hardship. If you had to take a part-time job at the hospital to fix the body damage you did to your BMW by hitting that other person, that’s not. * Third World applicants. * How you talk about your challenges/hardship is key. Zip it, kid. 3. Cry Me a River

7. Better to be specific than to be vague. Society is accustomed to using vague labels for people and what they do: student, businessman, housewife, factory worker, etc. We want to know what’s different about you. If you tell the scholarship committee that you want to be a doctor, that sounds pretty good. If you say that you want to be a doctor who performs research that leads to new drugs to reduce the effects of Alzheimer’s, or that you want to work to improve dental health among inner-city children, or open a practice in the country in order to improve elderly care in under-served rural areas — that sounds exceptional. The more specific you are, the more your essay is going to resonate. Judges are commonly teacher types. Teachers aren’t in it for the money, and naturally, they gravitate toward people like themselves. 4. Give Us Some Vague, Self-Absorbed Plans for Your Future Nothing wrong with wanting tons of money. You may want to tell the committee something different, though.

8. * Avg. app lists a truckload of school-sanctioned activities School-related activities on their own just aren’t enough Go beyond high school. Four years of school-related activities is considered average. 5. Ignore the World Outside High School These people are trapped in high school. You are not.

9. Your role in your own family is not as important as your school activities – it’s MORE important. School will be over in a few years, but your family is around forever. If you’re so busy with family responsibilities that you can’t involve yourself in student organizations, then you may just have a stronger application than those who do. We can’t give you credit for your family responsibilities if you don’t tell us what they are! Tell your story, regardless of where it takes place. 6. Forget About Family Blood is thicker than water. Capisce?

10. Talk about what you’ve actually done – not just the groups you’ve joined. “4 Years In My Church Youth Group” Set yourself apart, then, by talking about what you did over that time Soup kitchen. 150 people x 208 weeks = 31,200 meals to homeless people. If you want us to know you’re industrious, you have to tell us what you’ve done. 7. Give No Details

11. Be careful about getting on a “high horse” and sounding too judgmental or preachy, or giving the impression that solutions to the world’s problems are obvious. Intelligence is cheap. Maturity is priceless. Show maturity in your essays and you’ll be much more likely to bring home a check. We want to give money to the ones who are going to make it. So we like maturity. Sign of maturity: Ability to balance their own big ideas with the knowledge that the world is complex, and that they still have a lot to learn. Complex problems seldom have simple answers. 8. Preach To Me

12. Everything in your essay should be relevant to the topic at hand. “My name is Jane Doe, and I was born in Hershey, Pennsylvania on July 3, 1986. My mother is a dental hygienist and my father is a mortgage broker, and I have two brothers and two sisters. I attend Kennedy High School, where I am a senior.” We. Don’t. Care. Stop filling space. If you were born to crack-addicted parents in Miami who dropped you off in the Everglades as a newborn, but a family of alligators took you in and raised you as one of their own, and that’s the reason you’ve been captain of the varsity swim team since age 11 – great. Tell us. If not, leave it out. 9. Bore Us With Irrelevant Crap

13. “ If I don’t get this scholarship…. …I probably won’t be able to attend college. “ …I may lose my apartment. “ …I have no idea what I’m going to do. “ Pressure! Judges don’t enjoy dream-crushing. Duty: Select most qualified applicant. 10. Act Like You’ll Starve If You Don’t Win

14. Questions?

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